Mintzberg’s observations and research indicate that diverse manager activities can be organized into ten roles. For an important starting point, all ten rules are vested with formal authority over an organizational unit. From formal authority comes status, which leads to various interpersonal relations, and from these comes access to information, which, in turn, enables the manager to make decisions and strategies.

The ten roles are divided into three categories: interpersonal, informational, and decisional.

Interpersonal Roles

Three of the managers’ roles involve basic interpersonal relationships:

The figurehead role: Every manager must perform some duties of a ceremonial nature (e.g., the president greets the touring dignitaries, the sales manager takes an important customer to lunch). These activities are important to the smooth functioning of an organization.

The leader role: This role involves leadership directly (e.g., the manager is responsible for hiring an training his own staff). The leader role encompasses relationships with subordinates, including motivation, communication, and influence.

The liaison role: in this role the manager makes contacts inside and outside the organization with a wide range of people: subordinates, clients, business associates, government, trade organization officials, and so on.

Informational Roles

The processing of information is a key part of the manager’s job. Three roles describe the informational aspects of managerial work:

The monitor role: This role involves seeking current information from many sources. For example, the manager perpetually scans his environment for information, interrogates liaison contacts and subordinates and receives unsolicited information.

 The disseminator role: In their disseminator role, managers pass information to other, both inside and outside the organization.

The spokesperson role: In their spokesman role, managers send some of their information to people outside the organization about company policies, needs, actions, or plans.

Decisional Roles

The manager plays the major role in his unit’s decision-making system. Four roles describe the decisional aspects of managerial work:

The entrepreneur role: In his entrepreneur role,� managers search for improvement his unit to adopt it to changing conditions in the environment.

The disturbance handler role: This role involves responding to high-pressure disturbances. For example, manager must resolve conflicts among subordinates or between manager’s department and other departments.

The resource allocator role: In their resource� allocator role, managers make decisions about how to allocate people, budget, equipment, time and other resources to attain desired outcomes.

The negotiator role: The negotiations are duties of the manager’s job. These activities involve formal negotiations and bargaining to attain outcomes for the manager’s unit responsibility.

These ten roles are not easily separate: “No role can be pulled out of the framework and the job be left intact”. However, this description of managerial work should be important to managers: “…the managers’ effectiveness is significantly influenced by their insight into their own work” (L. Gulick).

As organizations continue to restructure to work teams, the need for training in conflict resolution will grow. Conflict arises from differences, and when individuals come together in teams, their differences in terms of power, values, and attitudes contribute to the creation of conflict.

To avoid the negative consequences that can result from disagreements, most methods of resolving conflict stress the importance of dealing with disputes quickly and openly. Conflict is not necessarily destructive; however, when managed properly, conflict can result in benefits for a team. Conflict arises from differences.

When individuals come together in work teams their differences in terms of power, values and attitudes, and social factors all contribute to the creation of conflict. It is often difficult to expose the sources of conflict. Conflict can arise from numerous sources within a team setting and generally falls into three categories: communication factors, structural factors and personal factors. Barriers to communication are among the most important factors and can be a major source of misunderstanding.

Communication barriers include poor listening skills; insufficient sharing of information; differences in interpretation and perception; and nonverbal cues being ignored or missed. Structural disagreements include the size of the organization, turnover rate, levels of participation, reward systems, and levels of interdependence among employees.

Personal factors include things such as an individual’s self-esteem, their personal goals, values and needs. In order for conflict to be dealt with successfully, managers and team members must understand its unpredictability and its impact on individuals and the team as a whole.

Conflict in work teams is not necessarily destructive, however conflict can lead to new ideas and approaches to organizational processes, and increased interest in dealing with problems.

Conflict, in this sense, can be considered positive, as it facilitates the surfacing of important issues and provides opportunities for people to develop their communication and interpersonal skills. Conflict becomes negative when it is left to escalate to the point where people begin to feel defeated and a combative climate of distrust and suspicion develops. Negative conflict can destroy a team quickly, and often arises from poor planning

Complaint systems (also known as a conflict management systems or internal conflict management systems or integrated conflict management systems[1]) are sets of procedures used in organizations to address complaints and resolve disputes. They are also known as dispute systems.

Complaint systems in the US have undergone several innovations especially since since about 1970 with the advent of extensive workplace regulation. Notably in many countries, conflictmanagement channels and systems have evolved from a major focus on labor-management relations to a much wider purview that includes unionized workers and also managers, non-union employees, professional staff, students, trainees, vendors, donors, customers etc.

There is a substantial early history of scholarly work on due process, and union and non-union grievance procedures within organizations. This work focused primarily on rights-based conflictresolution between unionized and non-union workers and their managers. Scholarly work has evolved to cover both a wider range of conflict management channels, and, also, a much wider range of disputants.

In the 1970s and 1980s much interest arose in the United States, in dealing with conflict informally as well as formally, and in learning from conflict and managing conflict. In contemporary language, these discussions centered on the "interests" of all who would consider themselves stake-holders in a given conflict—and on systems change—as well as resolving grievances.

These discussions led to questions of how to think about complaint systems and how to link different conflict management offices and processes within an organization. Papers began to appear about a systems approach for dealing with complaints—and all kinds of disputes—within organizations.

The concept of an integrated conflict management system was conceived and developed by Mary Rowe, in numerous articles in the 1980s and 1990′s. She saw the need to offer options for complainants and therefore a linked systems of choices within an organizational system.
The idea of a systems approach has endured well. In recent years however, there has been discussion as to whether conflict should be "managed" by the organization——or whether the goal is to understand, deal with and learn from conflict. There is also concern about practical and theoretical issues in "integrating" a system, with some observers preferring the idea of "coordinating" a conflict system.

There is also a major need to collect, review and understand the nature of conflict management and complaint systems around the world.

Studies and citations are needed about how complaint systems work for women as well as men. Research is needed as to how systems work for many different national groups, for people of different socio-economic classes, and different ages, and different religions, and especially for contract workers and immigrant workers, in every country. Studies (and citations) are needed about complaint systems in health care, in faith-based organizations, in schools, in political organizations, in the military and in many specialized occupations. Studies are needed about important specialized issues like free speech